Hester Musson for The Night Hag

Bestselling author of The Beholders, Hester Musson, presents a thrilling new Scottish historical mystery, brimming with science, spiritualism and belief. From standing stones to ancestral secrets, The Night Hag will keep you guessing until the very end.

'Unsettling, claustrophobic and thoroughly compelling, this beautifully plotted tale of 1880s Scotland is the perfect gothic companion for lightless winter evenings.'

Kate Riordan

Scotland, 1886. Lil is an archaeologist who has dedicated herself to a life of rational enquiry. But she is plagued by nightmares which haunt her sleep, and by memories of her mother, a famous medium. As Lil tracks down a mysterious doctor who she believes will cure her of her night terrors, she is caught in a fight between science and superstition, between who she wants to be and the identity she can’t escape.

But who exactly is this doctor that Lil so feverishly reveres? And how could the long-lost hoard unearthed at one of Lil's digs reveal secrets from her past?

Hester Musson's Gothic historical novel The Beholders was a Times bestseller and shortlisted for the HWA Debut Crown in 2024. She lives in rural Scotland at the top of an old, jackdaw-haunted building, and it's beginning to show.